The Heinz Stoewer Space Award is awarded on an annual basis to one MSc student or Young Graduate working in the space domain at the faculty of Aerospace Engineering of TU Delft.
The objectives of the award are to distinguish students of the faculty for their Master theses, encourage and stimulate high-quality work of Master students, promote visibility of students’ work being of high societal relevance and acknowledge the achievements of Heinz Stoewer. Professor Heinz Stoewer – currently Distinguished Visiting Scientist at NASA JPL – has been Chairholder at the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering from 1986 to 2001.
This year the laureate Sean Pepper was selected as the winner of the Heinz Stoewer Space Award based on the quality and relevance of his scientific research performed during his MSc thesis on: “Design of a Primary Mirror Fine Positioning Mechanism for a Deployable Space Telescope”. His supervisor was Dr. Hans Kuiper.
Sean worked on the thermal-mechanical design of the precision calibration actuation subsystem for the segmented primary mirror of the deployable telescope. This mechanism will need to position each of the segments within 5 nm of each other and maintain that calibration in the dynamic thermal environment of Low Earth Orbit.
Being hard working, motivated and gifted with versatile mechanical and systems engineering skills, Sean showed to be a strong team player, thinking analytically and approaching engineering problems with an open, but critical, mindset.
Via this message we would like to congratulate Sean Pepper with receiving this Heinz Stoewer Space Award.
